


Upon Arrival

by WardenCommanderCousland



Series: Return to Duty Universe [1]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 01:30:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14683614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WardenCommanderCousland/pseuds/WardenCommanderCousland
Summary: Shepard promised the rescue mission on Aratoht would only take a few hours.Takes place during the events of Arrival (ME2).





	Upon Arrival

Garrus still wasn’t used to the way Joker’s voice echoed through the comms in the Normandy SR-2. It bounced off the walls in the battery. In Shepard’s cabin, it seemed to rebound from every surface, making the pilot’s presence known even when you were trying your best to ignore him.

Which Garrus had been doing for the last several minutes. He continued to lay on the bed, taking long, slow breaths, waiting for Shepard to emerge from her shower. At long last, the water had turned off and she reappeared, toweling her short black hair. Droplets created small, translucent circles on the white fabric of the Cerberus-issue fatigues.

“Commander, we’re in orbit above Aratoht.” Joker repeated. “The Kodiak is ready when you are.”

Shepard sighed and acknowledged the message. She sat on the bed, the smooth curve where her bottom met her back just grazing Garrus’s leg. He sat up and wrapped his arm around her waist. “I don’t like you going out there alone.”

“I have to,” she said, pulling the towel away from her head. Damp strands clung to her face and neck. “It’s dangerous enough to send a lone human into a Batarian base. Even if this wasn’t a solo mission, I can’t risk bringing anyone from my team with me.”

Garrus laughed. “Because you’ve never sent us on risky, suicidal missions before.” He pulled her closer, breathing in the faintly citrus smell of the levo-amino soap. If he could only hold her a bit longer. He slid the tips of his fingers beneath the waistband of her pants.

Shepard pulled away. “I should go.”

“You should tell Hackett where to stick his solo mission,” Garrus suggested. “You’re not Alliance anymore.”

She got up off the bed and paced along its foot. “I’m not, but he asked this as a favor. The Alliance won’t pull a deep-cover operative if it means putting the rest of the team in danger. But Cerberus has the resources, the ability to get her back.”

“You mean they have you,” Garrus said flatly. “A Spectre.”

“And an N7,” Shepard added. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay cloaked as much as possible, pull Kenson and drop her off with her station. I should be back in a few hours.”

“And if you aren’t?”

Shepard pursed her lips and turned towards the fish tank. Its soft hum was the only sound in the room for several moments.

“Commander, we can’t keep the Normandy in stealth mode forever. I’m cooking the engineering level as it is, and Jack doesn’t have much more she can take off.”

“I’ll be back,” Shepard said finally. She tilted her head towards the door, gesturing that it was time to go. Garrus followed her to the elevator, keeping her within grabbing distance the whole way. In the few weeks since they’d started sleeping together, he found himself craving her touch. She was one of the only friends he had left, one of the most important things in the galaxy. He hadn’t felt that way about anyone in…well, it had been a long time.

The elevator’s doors opened to the CIC, but Garrus hit the button again, pulling the lift down towards the crew quarters. Taking advantage of the few remaining minutes, Garrus did something he hadn’t yet dared: he grabbed Shepard and pulled her into a deep kiss. Spirits, he was going to need to make this last as long as he could.

“What was that for?” she asked when they finally came up for air.

“Just giving you a reason to come back,” Garrus said. The elevator doors opened. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some really big guns to calibrate. Just in case I need to haul your ass out of there.”

He could hear Shepard muttering about calibrations as the doors closed behind him. He stifled a laugh, startling a Cerberus crew member as she passed, and headed for the gun battery.

Calibrating made the time pass swiftly. Garrus found it easy to lose himself in the fine details of the guns, fiddling with the controls and setting benchmarks. He hummed to himself as he worked, old marching songs from his platoon, standards his father played growing up. He could always rely on the guns to keep him from being distracted.

Because Shepard had always been a distraction. Garrus never thought he had a thing for humans, but it wasn’t about that with her. It was about Shepard, the way she led, her ability to bring so many different people together for the common goal, how she made everyone under her command feel at ease with her, even when they couldn’t get along with each other. You couldn’t help but respect that.

And yet, simple respect wasn’t what drew him to her. He wanted to believe himself the cold-hearted mercenary, extinguishing lives with a single pull of the trigger. But Shepard knew, she knew he wouldn’t be able to kill a friend. It was why she stood in his way, between his slug and Sidonis, until Garrus relented. So when he agreed to blow off steam with Shepard, he realized it was something he’d been wanting, however unconsciously, all along.

The guns kept him sane. Gave him a focus so he wasn’t constantly drawn to the notion of what she looked like outside of her armor, stripped of the Cerberus fatigues she hated so much (or, spirits help him, that dress Kasumi made her wear – he needed a solid three days in the battery to forget that). Even when she flustered him to the point that optimizing firing algorithms seemed impossible, he managed to find his way back into the serene peace of the guns.

“Hey, Garrus?”

He opened his eyes and blinked a few times, clearing them. At some point he’d fallen asleep on the floor of the gun battery. Spirits, he hadn’t done that since the showdown with Sidonis. “Is she back?” he asked the battery in general. Joker would hear him anyway.

Garrus heard Joker’s voice hitch. “That’s what I wanted to ask. Did Shepard give you any idea of what the plan was? Because it’s been over a day and she hasn’t called for an extraction yet.”

Spirits. Garrus pushed himself up to a sit. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Joker was sitting in the dark, leaning forward in the pilot’s chair, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together in front of his mouth. The myriad of haptic displays that normally covered the Normandy’s front windows were gone and Joker was staring intently at the planet and the asteroid belt beyond it. In the distance was the faint glow of a mass relay.

“About six hours after she left, a shuttle escaped Aratoht’s atmosphere, but didn’t join any passing ships.” Joker said, leaning back. He traced a trajectory towards the outer rim of the asteroid belt. “I lost track of it here.”

Garrus took the vacant copilot seat and studied the view before them. After a moment, he asked, “Is that asteroid breaking orbit?” One of the larger ones on the outer rim appeared to have separated from the rest of the belt.

Joker nodded. “Yeah, it has been for a few hours now. It looks like there’s some sort of research outpost on it. I’m having trouble reaching it though, like someone’s jamming their comms.”

They sat in silence for a few more minutes before Garrus said, “I think we need to call Hackett.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Joker said grimly. He brought up a haptic screen and started typing. “Normandy SR-2 to Alliance Command. This is the independent Normandy SR-2 paging Systems Alliance Command.”

A neutral-voiced Alliance officer responded. “Alliance Command. Who are you trying to reach?”

“Admiral Steven Hackett.” Joker made a sour face.

Hackett’s face filled the haptic screen almost instantly. “What is it, Moreau?”

“Shepard’s gone silent,” Garrus said, trying to keep his voice neutral. “We’ve been above Aratoht for almost 30 hours with no mission update.”

Hackett was impassive. “She was to go in alone and retrieve Kenson. These things take time.”

Joker relayed the story about the shuttle and the information on the asteroid. “What is Kenson working on down there?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.” Hackett said. “Even my Alliance clearance hasn’t granted me access to that project. Keep me posted. Hackett out.”

“Well that was useless,” Joker muttered, flicking the screen away.

Garrus and Joker resumed their vigil, watching the asteroid as it slowly pulled further and further from the belt. To Garrus’s eyes, it looked as though it was headed for the mass relay. That had to be impossible. The relays couldn’t override the gravitational pull of a star. They were in orbit themselves.

They sat for what felt like hours. Joker had directed EDI to keep all Normandy crewmembers away from the cockpit, and kept the room dark in order to keep a clear view on the system outside.

Finally, EDI flickered to life beside them. “We are receiving attempted hails, Mr. Moreau. Something on the asteroid’s research station is trying to signal the Normandy, but no messages are getting through. The station’s communication systems appear to be offline.”

“It’s her,” Garrus said, standing suddenly. He leaned on the Normandy’s front windows. “Take us in closer, Joker.”

Joker flew towards the rogue asteroid, coming well short of the actual space rock. “If I get any closer, I’m going to have to start calculating for a relay jump.” He began pulling up screens.

“Come in, Normandy!” Shepard’s voice rang clear through the cockpit. “Joker, get me out of here, _now_.”

Joker’s hands flew across the screen. “Shit, shit, shit!” He shouted, frantically calculating for the impending jump.

Garrus turned and ran for the elevator, smashing his fist onto the call panel. He had to get to the shuttle bay. Miraculously, the lift was already at the floor and, for once, felt like it took no time at all to reach the bottom of the ship. The bay itself was empty, the shuttle pilot most likely up on the crew level, waiting to be called for an extraction.

“EDI, seal the bay’s atmo and open the door,” he shouted at the AI’s panel, grabbing his helmet and yanking it over his crest. Some of the fringe got pinched, but that matter could wait. The asteroid was less than a mile from the relay and Shepard was still on it.

The shuttle bay’s door lowered, revealing the flight pad on the asteroid’s surface. Garrus searched frantically, looking for the signature black N7 armor. There she was, standing next to the radio tower. A hologram was flickering over it – a Reaper?

Garrus yelled Shepard’s name into the comm. She turned and sprinted towards the Normandy, jumping onto the open bay door. Garrus grabbed her hand and pulled her up the panel as it started to rise. They rolled into the bay and Garrus wrapped his arms around her as the door sealed, pulling her close to him. They huddled on the bay’s floor, bracing for whatever may come.

“Prepare for mass relay jump.” EDI’s neutral voice called through their comms. Garrus muttered every prayer of thanksgiving he could remember from childhood, when he still believed the spirits watched over everyone and could make a difference in the course of your life. The Normandy shuddered as she passed through the relay, a shake that continued as Joker guided them through what felt like a chain of at least three.

Finally, the ship stopped shaking and a faint hissing sound indicated that air was being forced back into the shuttle bay. Garrus pulled his own helmet off and turned to Shepard. She hadn’t moved yet. He flicked his head to allow his visor to bring up her suit’s vital signs. “Shit,” he muttered. Her pulse and respiratory rate were low, too low. He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the med bay.

Dr. Chakwas rushed to his side when he entered, hitting the releases on her armor and popping off the plates as fast as he could. Once she was down to her undersuit, Garrus set her on the bed and hovered in the corner while the doctor began pulling her various tools and scanners across the Commander’s still body.

“Whoever was down there, they pumped her full of way too many different sedatives,” Chakwas said finally. “But I’ve got her stabilized. She’ll come out of it in a few hours.”

“Good,” Joker’s voice echoed over the comm. “Because the Alliance just radioed. They’re sending Hackett aboard to find out why the Normandy destroyed an entire star system.”

Garrus decided that Shepard’s pets needed to be fed. He’d completely abandoned them, and didn’t know if anyone else one the crew would think to do it. He hurried to the elevator and rode it back to Shepard’s cabin.

The hamster appeared to have survived his inattention, though he looked a little skinny. The fish however...

The doors slid open to reveal a shell-shocked Shepard just as Garrus finished scooping out the last dead fish. He dropped the offending creature, yanked his hand out of the tank and rushed to her.

“I’m fine,” Shepard said, waving him off when he offered his dry hand. He followed her to the couch. She glanced at the pale, dead fish, bobbing morbidly along the glass. “You know, you can just flush them out the airlock.”

“I needed to kill time,” Garrus admitted.

A brief smirk flashed across Shepard’s face. “Does that mean my guns are perfectly calibrated?” She leaned back and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.

“What happened?”

“I’m getting court-martialed.” She said, sounding defeated. “I tried to warn the colony, but there just wasn’t _time_. The asteroid was moving too fast, I was too close to the relay. Three hundred thousand batarians are dead and the hegemony is calling for my head.”

Garrus’s brow plates furrowed. “And before that? What happened to Kenson?”

“I got her out of the batarian prison and rode with her back to her research base. They captured her for planning to destroy the mass relay.” Shepard didn’t pull her hands away from her eyes. “Kenson’s team found a piece of a Reaper on that asteroid, and Kenson said she had a vision of the Reapers using the relay in that system to return to the galaxy. She had to destroy it.”

She lowered her hands but kept her eyes fixed on the cabin’s ceiling. “Once I returned her to The Project’s base, she changed her mind. She attacked me and imprisoned me for…I’m not sure how long. All I know is when I woke up I had thirty minutes to stop her and get off the asteroid.”

“She _wanted_ the Reapers to come through the relay?” Garrus was confused. He reached out to touch Shepard’s arm but she flinched away.

“She was indoctrinated.” Shepard said plainly. “She was convinced the Reapers would bless her for allowing their arrival.”

Oh.

Garrus leaned back. He wanted to sink into the couch’s soft leather, but decided against it. He rose and headed for the door.

“Don’t go,” Shepard said, so softly he thought he imagined it at first. But she was standing, staring at him. She walked over and took his hand. “I’m turning myself in to Anderson as soon as we reach the Citadel. Just…give me something to hold on to until then.”

~

Anderson was waiting at the Citadel’s docking bays and looked genuinely sorry to be handcuffing his protégé. His aide, Udina, directed all the ship’s crew to gather their belongings and disembark, stating that the Alliance was seizing control of the Normandy. He sneered as the “aliens” filed out. Garrus mustered his most intimidating war stare, but the politician simply shook his head and moved on.

Garrus stood on the deck with his bag, debating where to head next. Omega was out. Aria wouldn’t keep his identity as Archangel secret without Shepard there. He didn’t feel like hitting a hotel, either, until he could make up his mind.

Instead, he hailed a passing transit cab and gave the driver, a young turian who looked barely beyond mandatory service age, his father’s address. Settling into the back seat, he watched the millions of lights flash by as the driver wove through the skytraffic. The Citadel had barely survived one Reaper. What were they going to do when more came? How many Reapers were out there anyway, waiting in dark space?

The security measures allowed Garrus in with a simple handprint. Castis Vakarian’s home would always be open to his children. He dropped his bag on the floor and followed the echo of his father’s voice through the apartment. Garrus found Castis in his study, chatting away with a familiar face on the vidscreen.

Castis glanced towards Garrus then turned back to the screen. “We’ll have to wrap this up some other time, Alec. My prodigal son has finally come home to me.”

Alec Ryder’s familiar laugh resonated through the room as he signed off. Garrus had met his father’s friend many times, though never felt comfortable around him.

Castis reclined in his chair, gesturing for Garrus to join him in the room. “Alec is making final preparations for his departure to Andromeda. The Initiative selected him as the human Pathfinder.”

“Impressive,” Garrus said. Or at least it would be in 600 years.

Castis rose and poured two drinks from the bar, offering the first to Garrus. When he was seated again he asked, “So what finally made you come home? The last time we spoke you said you’d call me back. That was three months ago.”

“I thought this would be better.”

Castis took a sip, never taking his gaze away from Garrus. Every judgment throughout his life had started with that stare, from Garrus’s petulance over shooting lessons to the day he finally quit C-Sec.

“You’ve heard of Commander Shepard?” Garrus asked.

Castis nodded. “The human Spectre who convinced you to abandon your post and chase Saren?”

“I would have done it anyway,” Garrus argued back. He paused and took a breath. This wasn’t the way to start this conversation. He needed his father on his side. When he started again, he began with the mystery of Saren’s ship, of their discovery at Ilos, of Vigil and Sovereign, and the truth of what really happened at the Citadel two years ago. He told Castis everything Shepard and Liara had managed to learn of the Reapers, how they’d corrupted the Protheans into the Collectors. He told him about Harbinger’s threat, what they found at the Collector base, and what Shepard had told him about Kenson’s vision.

Castis sat for a moment, considering his son. Then he stood and put his unfinished drink aside. “I hope you weren’t planning on unpacking.”

Garrus blinked and stared up at his father. “I know it sounds insane, but I’m your son. You aren’t really kicking me out, are you?”

“We’re going to Palaven. You’re going to tell this to Primarch Fedorian.”


End file.
